Once Again ,Joffy Never Misses With Creating Poetry That Makes A 19th Century Poet Ascend.

can we talk about stolas and octavia and antidepressants for a second

as someone with a lot of experience taking antidepressants and dealing with family members who Do Not Understand how depression works, it really struck me how octavia deals with discovering that stolas has been taking antidepressants.

presumably, he has been taking these for a VERY long time and based on the evidence in this episode, nobody in his life knew about it- clearly not blitzø or octavia, at least.

i don't see stolas as someone who has been to therapy - this reads to me very much like someone who saw "happy pills" and decided to self-medicate because he thought they would fix him, not as someone who was prescribed a medication and a dose to take (we've seen him downing handfuls of these pills on several occasions in past episodes)

octavia is (understandably) unsettled when she finds this giant box of pills, and despite all her complicated feelings for her father she IMMEDIATELY goes to find him to bring him his pills

octavia is smart!! yes she is pissed off at her dad and this implies that she could have gone to see him at any time when he was calling her, but this discovery kind of goes beyond any argument- no matter how she feels, she ultimately doesn't want stolas to suffer

then we get the big fight scene, which ends with the devastating argument between octavia and stolas where she says "was this my fault that you needed these?"

i adore the amount of nuance in their interaction here for so many reasons, but specifically this vein of "i love you but clearly you don't love me or else you wouldn't be depressed" hits very close to home for me and i love the way it's shown as messy and neither stolas nor octavia really understand the way their words are hurting one another

so it kind of breaks my heart that she closes herself off to him but leaves him with this bottle of happy pills because he does need them. and she knows it, and she cares enough to want him to be happy.

she just doesn't think that happiness includes her, because in her mind she's nothing more than an obligation to him.

ugh the day these two reunite i will be reduced to a pile of mush i just love how complex their relationship is it's so tasty

"A shared will, a shared hand- my lord's claws are my own, and I faithfully carry out their every wish."

COTLtober Day Twenty Nine: Claws

I forgot to post this yesterday in the interest of going to bed. Bed is important, but also this. Anyways, I feel Not Great right now, but I am Surviving, and you should to. Go drink water, take your meds if you haven't, eat something if you're hungry, and keep living. That's it, send post.

papa nari tings

i just realized this is my first art thing of 2025. happy new year heres a silly thing.

individual panels under the cute hehe

Holy shit??

You will never be part of this world, Lonely God

Based on Gustav Klimt's painting "Death and Life"

bro you cooked a whole buffet with this one , more cotl lore theories/analysis FTW

I was talking to my bestie @cultoftheswag on vc and the neurons started firing after watching the sin cutscene, so, theories on secondary aspects of each crown (long post) (maybe insane sounding and barely readable):

This all started off as theorizing that the sin snake is actually the being inside the crown (not a god but more like the crown is sentient) that has finally woken due to lamb's accumulated power. Expanding on that theorizes all crowns have a sentience, but based on this line, not all of the crown bearers awakened their crowns:

Bestie (Swag) pointed out that the only other crown with 2 aspects was the purple crown, Shamura, who has both war and knowledge. With the previous theory, it means that Shamura awakened their crown and brought forth the secondary domain; knowledge.

Which leads me to the brain worm thought of "what are the other crown's secondary aspects?" Well.

Lock the fuck in cuz I did

Each crown has 2 aspects that follow the same pattern:

The primary aspects of green, yellow, blue and purple are all sub categories of the red crown (chaos, famine, disease and war all bring death) and the same can be said for the mirrored aspect (order, abundance, health and peace all bring life)

There is also a pattern in the primary aspects of 4 being solid events (famine, disease, war, death AND order, abundance, health, life) and one conceptual (chaos and peace)

With this in mind, all secondary aspects might be sub categories of the red crown's secondary aspect, sin. Except, knowledge isn't a sin, so like what the fuck, right? Ok but what if I told you that knowledge isn't the sinful aspect of the purple crown, but the opposite of it.

The sin snake mentions being able to control and use the sins of your followers and that you alone, as their god, is capable of forgiving them or letting them be taken over by sin. This would mean that the mirror aspect of sin would be absolution. If the purple crown's aspect of knowledge isn't the sin, then knowledge is the path of absolution of a sin. A sin like deceit and deception.

This still doesn't bring me any closer to figuring out the other crowns but I will not be defeated. Upon a little bit of shallow research, there appears to be the concept of mortal sins in Christianity/Christo aligned faith. Excluding the seven deadly sins from the list of mortal sins and anything faith related (because it would be pointless if a crown's sin power was to make you not believe in your god. Like, that would suck. It would kill the crown's own cult which which bishop derives their power from.)

That leaves the following aspects: murder, adultery and theft. Since Shamura's secondary aspect is confirmed to be knowledge, the mirror aspect has to be deceit even though it is not a named mortal sin. Though, I'm fairly certain lying and being untruthful would generally be considered a sin in most religious settings.

All three fall into the same pattern as the primary aspects:

Murder, adultery, theft, deceit are all forms of sin, while the opposite aspects, repentance, loyalty, charity and knowledge are all ways to absolve or correct those sins. The red crown still holds dominion over the others.

Murder, adultery, theft and deceit/ repentance, charity, knowledge and absolution are solid events where sin and loyalty are conceptual aspects.

So now onto who has what, which secondary aspects belong to which crown. This is just my working theory but after thinking about it for a while, I think I have it.

Leshy/ the green crown has the primary aspect of chaos/order and secondary aspect of murder and repentance. Though Leshy may not have awakened his crown to learn this, it would makes sense if Darkwood cultists remembered that murder is favored by the green crown. Hence why Darkwood is so incredibly full of bodies plastered ritualistically on trees.

Heket/ the yellow crown has the primary aspect of famine/abundance and the secondary aspect of adultery and loyalty. Idk how to describe it, but something about abundance feels like it would fit well with adultery, like the overconsumption and joy of prosperity leading to immorality, resulting in a punishing famine that forces loyalty upon Anura's denizens.

Kallamar/ the blue crown has the primary aspect of disease/health and the secondary aspect of theft and charity. We all KNOW Kallamar was not charitable ok. Anchordeep's temple was said to be beautiful and covered in opulent crystals and gold. He may have acted charitable to his devoted followers but in a "ooooh I'll give your struggling village a beautiful crystal statue of me to pray to, isn't that nice?" kind of way.

Though, neither Leshy, Heket or Kallamar successfully awakened their crowns, I feel like the aspects would still be a part of their domains and personalities. Even Narinder may not have been able to awaken his crown, but due to the fact that he was imprisoned and weakened through lack of faith powering the crown (credit to Swag who said this as I'm typing this whole post live on discord) (Swag says hi!!!!!)

Also as a side note, maybe the other crowns manifest as objects related to their other aspect. Clearly the red crown is a snake cuz, sin, but perhaps Shamura's would a divine book or if we stayed with the animal theme, an owl. (shoutout to me and swag losing our shit over "leshy's is a glock" and "kallamar's are airpods cuz they're overpriced and always get stolen")

This was not part of my original theory, but it came to mind joking about Kallamar's divine blue crown airpods, but what if Narinder's damage to his siblings is what kept the other three from awakening their crowns? Like, it damaged them as vessels of their crowns enough they were no longer seen as worthy to awaken them. That would make Narinder a huge bitch but what else is new tbh.

I know the sentiment of the day gets swept up into romantic love a lot, but I think it's important to remember that today wasn't about romance. It was about love, of all kinds, and there is no greater love than to love yourself.

If you spent the day alone, like I did, then don't feel like you've missed out or were undeserving in some way. Instead, take from today that you are enough without needing someone else beside you. You have come so far, often times without a loving voice beside you. You survive the trials and tribulations of life every day, in a way that is entirely unique from anyone else in the entire world.

You did that, nobody else.

Happy end to Valentine's Day everyone, remember to love yourself above all. I hope you all find the self-appreciation you deserve in life. It's hard, but you can do it.

There's only one of you, and they're perfect.

They always will be <3

PAINNN THSIS PAINFUUL OOUGH

|| Keeping you company ||

narinder being actually pretty physically affectionate hc my beloved

"You are like the sun"

-trod!Narinder

woe, narilamb be upon ye 🫴🏽

posting this to pretend that i don't have several WIP on my ipad begging to be finished (they will never be)

close ups

So the music loving tribe thing, made more lore for it:

When they were young, the lamb’s tribe had been moving around all across the old faith lands to escape from the slaughter. From rocky hills to caves to forests, until lastly near the sea.

They settled in a hill near the sea where it’s was far enough from the main land, the new land had vast meadows and a large enough shore to build bonfires.

The flock couldn’t arrange celebrations while they were hiding in forests (fearing it’s might draw attention to them) so in there they went wild with them ;new instruments, new dances , new decorations made with the shiny shells in the shoreline , new cuisines and a new common song.

Sang by honey like voices and preformed by masterful musicians, this melody became the symbol of their new home and a reminder of hope for coming generations.

Lamb would always sing it in their free time ; sitting by the sea collecting exotic rocks & colorful shells. They sang it, hummed it , played it on the conch and choreographed a personal dance for it. It almost became a prayer for them.

But after their tribe’s slaughter, that warm melody became a cold reminder of their home and a symbol of lost hope. Little by little they started to hum it less, they stopped singing it, and then they have forgotten it completely centuries later.

i have like 13 cotl au related writing drafts in here and all of them are angst. They're completely incomprehensible bc i'VE YET TO WRITE THE INTRODUCTION

but any way , alternative universes with different bovine as cult leaders & different TOWW and bishops with LORE